Gamebook store

Friday 25 January 2019

Vortrag über spielbücher



Last summer, Jamie and I met up with Paul Mason at Manticon in Germany. You knew that, because I posted about it already. Here's the second talk we gave, on gamebook history and design.

07m 41s: Media outrage about gamebooks as too scary for kids

11m 31s: The Lord of Shadow Keep, originally planned as a Fighting Fantasy book

13m 27s: The Way of the Tiger

17m 22s: Blood Sword

19m 24s: 1980s roleplaying in the world of Tekumel

22m 30s: Fighting Fantasy books by Paul Mason

31m 22s: Robin of Sherwood gamebooks

33m 12s: Heart of Ice

36m 10s: Duel Master

39m 33s: Inspiration for the Fabled Lands

42m 14s: The art of Russ Nicholson

43m 52s: The Keep of the Lich Lord

46m 28s: Fantasy maps by Leo Hartas

51m 01s: Frankenstein

53m 34s: Gamebooks in which you aren't the hero

54m 33s: Can You Brexit (Without Breaking Britain)?

1h 06m 05s: Early days of Games Workshop

1h 11m 51s: Steam Highwayman

1h 38m 09s: On not writing down to kids






12 comments:

  1. Das soll ich mir später anhören !

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dave, do you follow the Fabled Lands 7 kickstarter updates?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't get to see the updates directly, but somebody has sent me the latest one. Paul Gresty put a dignified and measured response to it on Facebook, and I don't think I can add anything to what he said.

      Delete
  3. Really interesting Dave, thanks for sharing. Lovely to see Paul speaking too - he's far too bashful about just how creative his FF books were.

    Quote of the interview: "acupuncture on the brain"!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, Michael... Now I need to go through the whole talk and see who said that, and why :-)

      Delete
  4. Very interesting, I watched most of it.
    Yes, I still remember this passage of the "Talisman" (and even the French translation did not water it down). As young teenagers, we just felt this "violence" not as "actual" violence to repeat on others but rather like children who scare themselves and others during Halloween. I had written, in my comprehensive school, a gamebook taking place in a post-apocalyptic version of that school where your task was to survive, fighting teachers who had turned insane. Adults were horrified at it, but we teenagers just had a lot of fun and never attacked teachers for real.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Same here. As a kid I read lots of ultra-violent fiction -- and wrote it, too -- but I would never dream of harming somebody IRL.

      Delete
  5. This is a rare treat for us gamebook enthusiasts, Dave. I particularly enjoyed "somebody lobs something at Dave" (1124), "Dave surreptitiously checks notes" (1532) and "Dave does Lich Lord impression" (4412).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A reminder watching that middle one that it's high time I got bifocals, Andy!

      Delete
  6. Was Frankenstein ever on Android? The Inkle page here:
    https://www.inklestudios.com/frankenstein/
    implies it but I can't find this anywhere.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They did an Android version but it didn't work properly so was quickly withdrawn. There is an EPUB3 version that works with e-readers that have Javascript enabled:
      http://tinyurl.com/jrfoodp

      Delete